Civilised: Humble Sid Meier Bundle

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The latest Humble Bundle offers the chance to own three complete Civilizations, as if you were trying to recreate the British Empire. Along with Civs III, IV, the lowest tier contains the recent Ace Patrol games, which are fairly lightweight, but clever, replayable and oddly adorable considering the World War dogfighting subject matter. All of that, along with the latest incarnation of Railroads! can be yours for any chosen price. Pay more than the average (at time of writing, $8.16) and you’ll receive Civ V, and the Gods and Kings DLC. More than $15 unlocks the Brave New World DLC as well. BONUS: approximately two days of a Humble Paradox sale remain.

I have Civs IV and V installed at all times, and they happily co-exist. Two very different approaches to a common theme. I haven’t played III for ages and I’m sure someone will argue that it’s worth going back to, but I’ve always thought of II and IV as the high-points of the series, with V having grown into a pleasant diversion.

The main draw of the bundle, since it lacks Covert Action for which you’ll have to visit GOG, is Ace Patrol. If you haven’t played the turn-based aerial combat game yet, this is a fine opportunity to correct that error.

– Psy combat that wasn’t a QTE, just another gun but with swirly visual effects, or pipemania but with neural pathways instead of pipes. The game messing with inputs or outputs to simulate psychological interference could be interesting, remapping certain controls, mirage enemies, misdirection – and the ability to inflict the same on your foes. The sort of thing Haze tried to do, but implemented not (apparently) terribly?

– Xenofungus and terraforming. Imagine traversing a living, potentially hostile environment, which you could blast swathes through with adequate firepower but would always have to keep an eye on in case it started creeping up on you. Or you could call in the terraformers to reclaim areas, turning them into less dangerous territory, though you’d better be prepared to defend them, or explain to your faction higher-ups why you directed eminently explodable strategic assets to the front lines…

– Receiving word that your faction has unlocked the secrets of High Energy Chemistry, and being issued with natty scarlet Plasteel armour on your next trip to the quartermaster.

– Killing Needlejets by circle strafing them until they run out of fuel and crash.

Someone provided me with a copy of the old Loki Games Linux port of SMAC, which I tried out of curiosity as to whether the resolution would work more nicely than gog’s SMAC does under wine. The answer is it’s a nightmare to try and get the Linux port to actually run on Linux, whilst GOG’s version under Wine is nearly perfect. This says more about the sorry state of legacy binary support on Linux than it does Wine. (or perhaps both. Wine is great software.)

I already have one gift copy in my Steam Account, not sure I need another one, but I would like to give Ace Patrol a go.
On the other hand, I have a huge list of games to play, so I better give this a miss.

Well, I got not one but two free copies of Civ V (given away with different game preorders) but haven’t played it even once yet. Brave New World sounds interesting—and indeed this bundle will be less than buying it off Steam right now—but I’ve got so many other games I want to play first, I’ll probably wait to pick up BNW when it’s £3 in a Steam sale.

Um, because I want the complete version. Contrary to Adam’s opening sentence, there are more than just those two expansions between the original game (which I preordered in ancient times) and the “complete” game. I will wait until the sale following Civ VI; and have the same plan for XCOM. I hate Firaxis for the way they release games, but at least it’s predictable and accurate in its use of “complete.”

EU IV has been cut to $10 (75% off) multiple times on both Humble Store and elsewhere.

At that point, the big sticker is the amount and cost of expansions. Those expansions kind of lurk around as a “Yes, you have a full game. But everyone else has a fuller one. Just look at the extra features you are missing.” bugbear in the back of your mind.

I was thinking about getting EU IV, and your mention of $10 may have pushed me over, but it’s $15 when I log in. I checked another site, which also has it on sale, but they have it for $16, and it’s reported cheaper by someone else, too. This makes me think that they just did a price hike because it was too low!

Great bundle, but the Civ 4 still comes with the double entries glitch on Steam. t’s so annoying that they keep selling the Civ 4 games, but refuse to fix the bug that gives you these double entries of all four Civ4 games/expansiones in your Steam library, of which half cannot be run in Windows.

So anyone who redeems the Civ4 complete package on Steam will get 8 new entries in their Steam library.

It should be an easy fix to just hide the mac versions, but neither 2k or Valve seems to have interest in doing it, even though they keep making money of them. It would be nice if RPS could ask 2k or Valve why that glitch has been allowed to be there for 5-6 years now.

EDIT: Read your comment in full. I guess you knew about Mac versions already. I just wouldn’t call it a “glitch”, it is just DD-system untidiness. I would guess it has something to do with the way Civ V is deployed on steam and really it’s not a big deal.

He says that. Thing is, correctly packaged Steam games just give you the one library entry, which works equally well on either platform. Steam is smart enough to be able to launch a different executable based on the OS you’re running, they just apparently haven’t used that here from the sound of it.

It’s not a big deal, but considering that they keep making money of the games, they should afford to fix it. As a thank you to the customers if nothing else. They have had years to do it.

To leave it as it is, in a way so apperant that the humble bundle guys within a day themselves had to post a support page with an explanation and suggest workarounds, is pretty arrogant and/or lazy of 2k.link to support.humblebundle.com

They care about selling the game, but they apperantly don’t care about bugs that are really “in your face” and confusing for new and old customers.

I know it’s a bit jarring and understand your wish, as a customer, to keep your game library tidy. However, it’s not a “bug” or a “glitch”. These words describe errors and oversights in game code. The games themselves work perfectly fine, the publisher just didn’t take advantage of a certain steamworks feature.

Edit: i’ve read the HB support page you’ve provided and it seems Civ installs both versions (Windows and Mac) at the same time (instead of detecting your operating system and then using the appropriate install package). My guess is that this is just an artifact of porting a retail setup to steam and it would probably require more work from the developer to re-do both installs seperately than just tinkering with some steam settings. Although I admit, the fault probably lies with Steam, as an option to “show PC games only” (counterpart to “show mac games only”, on apple) seems not that hard to do.

An option to show only Windows games should not be needed. If an entry is not runnable on Window, it should just not be shown in Windows.

Whether or not it’s up to 2k or Valve to fix it, that’s for them do decided, as long as it’s fixed. Since it’s been so many years now since it was discovered, I don’t see any reason to excuse either 2k or Valve for it.

No, it’s not like that. There are literally two entries for each game, one for Mac, one for Win. They install completely separately and for all intents and purposes might be different games. If you look at the details view, the Mac versions have a permanent status of “Not available” under Windows. (The GTA III era games do the same thing, by the way, but interestingly, the Mac versions list a different developer, TransGaming Inc., who I assume did the porting.)

It’s really because these were among the first games offered in “Steamplay” mode, back when Valve hadn’t quite figured out how it all should work. There is quite a lot of similar legacy quirks on Steam.

As a person who has worked both as a tester and as a programmer fixing bugs, I can say that this is absolutely a bug and would be considered one everywhere I’ve worked. Anything that prevents the program from functioning correctly – including UI related issues like improper installs – is a bug.

ahhh so that’s why it does that! Its sure is annoying. Are these things not smart enough to tell the difference between windows and MAC to download the appropriate one? or give a pop up window asking which one you want to download instead of cluttering my games list?

Personally, I’d like all versions for every platform to show up at all times, with filter options. This way installing Windows games under Linux to run with Wine would be easier and wouldn’t require running a separate Steam install within Wine.

I already have IV, no interest in III (as it’s very flawed and practically obsolete with it’s much better successor). However, I don’t have V, which I’m quite interested in. I heard mixed things, but overall it seems to be different than IV, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

With so much Civilization, Ace Patrol and Railroads really stand out. But at least the former seems pretty interesting.

It’s unusually expensive for a Humble Bundle, though, with $15 for the complete package. But with the option to give most of it to AAH, that’s not even an issue, as far as I’m concerned.

I think V is a nice rounded package now with all of the expansion (though watch out, what you here (can) get isn’t the complete version, they are missing out on some civis and map packs which got out between vanilla and G&K expansion) There are religion, spies, archeology and arts features added, so I’d personally say that features argument doesn’t hold water any more. On the other hand with V you get lush production values and more civilizations than ever before.

I LOVE the UI in Civ 5, and I think that opinion is fairly well shared. The main complaints with Civ 5 upon release were:
1. Missing features from Civ 4, like religion and espionage
2. The new One Unit Per Tile combat is potentially interesting, but the AI has no idea how to cope with it and can be trounced even on high difficulty

I think item 1 was well fixed by the two expansions, so you’d be in good shape with either this Bundle or the Complete edition.

Item 2 is still the big controversy. Personally I’m not all that interested in high difficulty, so it never really bothered me, but for the gamers who are, many of them considered the game outright broken and not worth playing. I’ve heard some say that this issue was improved by subsequent patches and the expansions, but others who disagree with that.

Last piece to consider is that this bundle is NOT the “Complete Edition”. It includes the two big expansions which change gameplay, but does not include all the extra Civs and Maps. Here’s a list of the delta:link to reddit.com

To anyone reading, $1 is the price of your life now. Because by paying at least that you get Civ 3 and 4 complete. You can kiss the skies goodbye after that. Never has damning yourself been this cheaper :P You will never see the light of the day again. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

If she starts to believe that Gandhi loved to use nukes and that in the first World War, American bowmen fought against Viking tanks, then there may be unintentional and not necessarily positive side effects.

Other than that, I think that Civilization is a good introduction.to Strategy games.

Two questions:
1) Do you get separate keys or a key for each tier (as with Codemasters bundle)?

2) What is the relation between Civ V, Gods & Kings and Brave New World? Are they separate games (and separate entries in Steam library) or are they all integrated into Civ V (and what if I own Civ V Gold already)?

Re: 2 – All goes into a single Civ V entry, and both the big expansions (G&K, BNW) and the minor civilization and scenario packs are treated by Steam as DLC (i.e. no duplicates of anything). When you start a new game, you can pick which (if any) expansions/civ packs you want to use.

Has anyone played the new Railroads who can give me an idea of how close a style of game it is to Transport Tycoon? I’m curious as I never played the original and I’ve never quite worked out how different it and TT was!

Well I don’t know directly about TT, but SM’s Railroads should have been a spiritual successor to Railroad tycoon, which I adored and which was very close to TT.
What this game actually turned out to be is a pretty watered down version of RT. Lots of management options have been dumbed down and streamlined and if you want real deep strategic challenge, SM’s R isn’t the best option available (RT II holds that distinction imo) On the other hand, you get some of the slickness which characterised Meier’s mid 00s games. Everything flows, it’s still a nice time waster, it does get that feeling of joy when your train comes to the station and your earnings start to chime in. It does work more casual, but exactly cause of that, the rewards are more quick, the action goes smoother, there’s less empty time.
So you can enjoy it no problem, just you mustn’t expect strategic wonders of it.

Quite different, I think; I preferred TT. Railroads was much more focused on the train side, and you may find things like having to share rails with competitors at a usage cost, but also things like changing the carriages attached to an engine at each stop on its route. The memories are quite fuzzy by now and I never played it that much.

If this is the “new” one I think it is, I also remember its move to 3D breaking it free of a grid, which was actually kind of annoying for a strategy game since a few pixels’ wiggling either way may change if a pass in the terrain can support two adjacent tracks or just the one.

Thanks for the feedback both! I suppose for the price it’s worth a try even if it won’t quite scratch the same itch. I was getting the impression of it being a little simpler than the older games, but I always enjoyed building the railways best in TT anyway. Give me the ability to make silly tracks full of points and I tend to be able to find at least some enjoyment from it!

Not sure what the point of loading Civ III in there is, though, I can’t imagine anyone would play it when they could play the vastly, vastly, superior IV instead. I actually think I’d rather play II again than III.

Because they know no one will still buy it, it doesn’t cost them any future revenue to include it in the bundle. And having one extra game makes the bundle look better and might convince people to buy it because they just want to see their Steam counter as high as possible.

I’ve had Civ 4 and expansions languishing on my Steam account for ages. I could never get into it as the gameplay just doesn’t compare to my experiences with Alpha Centauri. Everybody seems to love it though… what am I doing wrong?

too bad there aren’t many actual sid meier games in this bundle. although the humble name is accurate, since for the big games here the game designers aren’t credited as the banner. hehe. the humble soren johnson bundle is the base bundle, pay 15 dollars for the extra humble jon schafer bundle.

My biggest issue with this bundle is that the charity beneficiary is not the EFF. With everything that’s been going on with them lately they’re my preferred choice to have that side of things go to. So, seeing as I already have Civ 5 with all DLC, I paid my dollar for Civ 3 which I did not have digitally but still remember fondly. Had it been the EFF I would have paid the average to see what else might be added, and I would have directed a good chunk towards them too.

Civ III is easily the worst of the 5 games and really not at all worth going back to (which isn’t to say it’s bad, it just wasn’t as good as Civ II or Alpha Centauri). Shame they haven’t put the original or Civ II up on Steam, I’d definitely buy them just for the nostalgia of having them.

The Ace Patrol games are quite fun for small bouts, it would be interesting to see a Civ game done with combat resolved in a similar fashion. Of course a game like that would take years to beat.

It seems likely that the traditional second week bonuses will be Pirates! and probably some Civ V dlc.

I bought C3 and C4 in a steam sale at some point and have played neither for more than about 20 minutes, instead sinking hours into SMAC. Whilst C5 is faintly interesting, the whole DLC madness makes me think I’ll pass on this one. I might fire SMAC up again this weekend.

Sometimes, it is good to try to find a quality item but we only do not want it. The next website will cater all lifestyle and fashion needs and their friendly support is obviously capable of help. fsession